Traditionally, sucrose has been used as the major, and most often the sole, sweetening agent in cookie doughs. When a cookie dough contains sucrose as the sole sweetening agent, at the completion of baking the sucrose is largely present as pockets of saturated sucrose solution held within the crumb matrix of the cookie. As the baked cookie cools to room temperature, or shortly thereafter, the readily-crystallizable sucrose begins to crystallize from these pockets of saturated sucrose solution. As the sucrose crystallizes, free moisture is lost from the cookie to the surrounding environment, even when the cookie is stored in a closed container. In two weeks or less, this loss of moisture from the cookie leads to a crispy texture throughout the cookie, even when the initial post-baking moisture content of the cookie is relatively high, for example 6 percent by weight or more.
The crispy texture produced by sucrose-containing cookie doughs is desired in most types of cookies and is one of the major reasons for including sucrose in the cookie dough. In addition, sucrose of course imparts a desirable sweet taste to the cookie dough. However, for a variety of health-related reasons, including the association of sucrose with cariogenicity, hyperactivity and diabetes, there is a need to reduce or eliminate the sucrose content of cookies, while still retaining the desirable attributes of sweetness and crispness conferred on the cookies by sucrose.
The complete or substantial elimination of sucrose from a conventional cookie dough which contains flour, water, sucrose, shortening and minor amounts of flavorants and colorants, and which in its sucrose-containing form produces crisp cookies, results in a "flaky" texture typical of biscuits. In addition, of course, the normal sweet taste of sucrose-containing cookies is lost. The changes in texture, sweetness, appearance, flavor and mouthfeel in the finished cookie produced from such a sucrose-reduced or -free dough makes them highly unattractive to consumers in general, and effectively restricts their use to dedicated dieters or people whose dietary intakes are restricted medicinally for reasons such as diabetes and excessive obeseness.
Attempts have been made to use a variety of other saccharides to replace sucrose as a sweetening agent in cookie and other doughs. For example:
Ludewig, H. G. et al, Eingenung Verschiedener Staerkeverzucherungstrodukte zur Herstellung von Muerbkeksen (Suitability of various starch-derived sugar products for preparation of cookies), Getreide, Mehl und Brot, 32, 100 (1978), describes experiments in which attempts were made to replace sucrose in cookie doughs with one of a variety of glucose syrups, maltodextrin or a high-fructose glucose syrup. All of these saccharide materials produced major changes in the properties of the resultant cookies, even when only 30 percent of the sucrose was replaced with the other saccharide material. For example, replacement of 30 percent of the sucrose with maltodextrin produced cookies which had a hard texture, felt hard and splintery when bitten and gave insufficient browning. The cookies were not sweet and tasted bland. On the other hand, replacement of 30 percent of the sucrose with the fructose-glucose syrup produced cookies with a vivid yellowish color and a soft, oily bite.
It has been reported that the addition of dextrin to bread having a high honey solids content partially overcomes the tendency of the high quantity of honey solids to decrease the volume of the bread; see:
Glabe and Silverbrandt, Influence of Dextrin on Bread With High Honey Solids Content, Bakers Digest, 2(6), 16 (1978).
This article suggests that the dextrin appears to facilitate the gluten-water reaction by reducing the time necessary for the water to penetrate in to the flour protein.
Interactions between wheat and soy proteins and starch and differences in the ability to bind dextrins are discussed in:
Dahle, L. K. et al, Wheat protein-starch interaction II. Comparative abilities of wheat and soy proteins to bind starch, Cereal Chemistry, 52(2), 212 (1975).
Dextrin made by hydrolyzing waxy starch with alpha and beta amylases has been stated to improve the quality of Japanese cakes; see:
Chemical Abstracts, 97, 108805h (1982) (Abstract of Japanese patent 82/47500 published Mar. 18, 1982).
Also, addition of a compound containing 40-80 percent of oils and fats, 15-50 percent of water and 1-10 percent of cyclodextrin in an amount of from 1-40 percent to rice cracker dough has been though to markedly improve crunchiness and texture of the resultant rice crackers; see:
Chemical Abstracts, 98, 196729k (1983) (Abstract of Japanese patent 83/43747 published Mar. 14, 1983).
Chemical Abstracts 88, 188513p (1978) (Abstract of Japanese patent 78/3547 published Jan. 13, 1978) states that the texture, flavor and taste of bakery products can be improved by adding thereto a mixture of calcium stearoyllactate, gelatin and dextrin or lactose.
Fructose is potentially sweeter than sucrose. Consequently, there is a theoretical advantage to replacing sucrose, in baked products which normally contain this sugar, with a smaller quantity of fructose to provide an equivalent degree of sweetness. Fructose has an agreeable sweetness and is claimed to be 15-80 percent sweeter than sucrose. See Schallenberger, R. S., J. Food Sci., 28, 584-89 (1963). However, the relative sweetness of fructose depends on its physical state; see Doty et al, Food Technology, 29, 34-38 (1975). Fructose is sweeter when cold, and at neutral or slightly acidic pH, or in dilute solution.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,137,336, 4,185,127 and 4,379,174, all to Radlove, state that the use of fructose as a replacement for sucrose to reduce calories in baked goods has met with little success because fructose loses much of its sweetness upon heating of the batter. U.S. Pat. No. 4,137,336 describes a dietetic cookie mix in which torula yeast, stearoyl monoglyceridyl citrates and propylene glycol monostearate are used to enable the fructose to retain a sufficient degree of sweetness when it is heated during the cookie baking process. U.S. Pat. No. 4,185,127 describes a dietetic cake mix in which crystalline fructose is combined with baking powder having glucono-delta lactone as the acidic component and emulsifiers such as propylene glycol monostearate and lactated monoglycerides to obtain a product which has an acceptably sweet taste upon baking. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,379,174, high fructose corn syrup is used to replace the expensive crystalline fructose used in the dietetic cake mix described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,185,127.
Fructose is known to aid moisture retention in baked goods, but reportedly does not provide the texture, consistency or color that would encourage its widespread use in baked goods. See Alternative Sweetners, The Caloric Control Council, Atlanta, Ga. 30342, page 6 (June 3, 1980). Moreover, retention of water by the fructose would tend to produce a soft or chewy texture as opposed to a crispy texture in the baked goods.
The use of other humectant sugars, such as dextrose, corn syrups, invert syrups, high fructose corn syrups, honey molasses and mixtures thereof, as a complete replacement for sucrose to provide a desired degree of sweetness to a baked product also tends to impart a soft or chewy texture to the baked goods. Additionally, replacement of the sucrose with at least one humectant sugar to reduce the quantity of sucrose used to less than 25 percent of the total weight of sugars, tends to result in a soft or chewy texture.
In experiments leading to the present invention, attempts were made to replace sucrose with maltodextrins having a dextrose equivalent (DE) of 5 to 15. It was found that substitution of maltodextrin for sucrose substantially reduced the sweetness level of the baked cookie. Moreover, although maltodextrins do produce an amorphorous, glassy solid as a result of the dehydration accompanying baking, and this amorphorous glassy solid does tend to impart a crispy texture to the baked cookie, the glass-forming abilities of relatively low DE maltodextrins are such that the texture of the resultant cookie is perceived as brittle rather than crisp. Moreover, replacement of the sucrose with maltodextrins cause a very severe reduction in cookie spread.
Cookie spread is known to be a relatively complex phenomenon influenced by a wide variety of factors, and numerous attempts have been made to find process for the control of cookie spread. See, for example:
A. Guertin, Viscosity as a Measure of Biscuit Flour Quality, Bakers Digest 22(4), 22 (1948); PA0 B. Fuhr, Cookie Spread--Its Effects on Production and Quality, Bakers Digest, 36(4), 56 (1962); PA0 C. Lorenz et al, Cookie Spread--Effects of Baking Under Varying Atmospheric Pressures, Bakers Digest, 46(3) 22 (1972); PA0 D. Bakers Digest 46(3), 66 (1972); PA0 E. Finney et al, Effects of Varying Quantities of Sugar, Shortening and Ammoninum Bicarbonate on the Spreading and Top Grain of Sugar-Snap Cookies, Cereal Chemistry, 27(1), 30 (1950); PA0 F. Yamazaki, The Concentration of a Factor in Soft Wheat Flours Affecting Cookie Quality, Cereal Chemistry, 32(1), 26 (1955); PA0 G. Yamazaki, The Application of Heat in the Testing of Flours for Cookie Quality, Cereal Chemistry, 36(1), 59 (1959); PA0 H. Sollars, Effects of Water-Soluble Constituents of Wheat Flour on Cookie Diameter, Cereal Chemistry, 36(6), 8 (1959); PA0 I. Kissell et al, Effects of Flour Lipids on Cookie Quality, Cereal Chemistry, 48(6), 655 (1971); PA0 J. Kissell, Protein Enrichment of Cookie Flours with Wheat Gluten and Soy Flour Derivatives, Cereal Chemistry, 52(5), 538 (1975); PA0 K. Badi and Hoseney, Use of Sorghum and Pearl Millant Flours in Cookies, Cereal Chemistry, 53(5), 733 (1976); PA0 L. Yamazaki et al, Effects of Flour Fraction Composition on Cookie Diameter, Cereal Chemistry, 54(2), 352 (1977); PA0 M. Yamazaki et al, Note on Effect of Brown Lipids on Cookie Quality, Cereal Chemistry, 56(6), 584 (1979); PA0 N. Connor and Keagy, Folacin Retention and Cookie Diameter in Enriched Cookies: Regression Analysis Using Factorial Design, Cereal Chemistry, 58(3), 239 (1981); PA0 O. Matz, S. A., Cookie and Cracker Technology, AVI Publishing Company, Westport, Conn. (1978), pages 4, 5, 16, 17, 123-125 and 135; PA0 P. Manelley, D. J. R., Technology of Biscuits, Crackers and Cookies, Ellis Horwood, Chichester, England 1983), pages 211-214; PA0 Q. Chemical Abstracts, 64, 18304e (1966) (Abstract of Sollars and Bowie, Cereal Chemistry, 43(2), 244-60 (1966)); PA0 R. Shellenberger, Chlorine Bleach and Cookie Doughs, Bakers Digest, 15(11), 206 (1941); PA0 S. Bakers Digest, 38(1), 82 (1964) PA0 T. Bakers Digest, 41(5), 123 (1967) PA0 U. Report of the 1942-1943 Committee on Testing Biscuit Cracker Flours, Cereal Chemistry, 20(5), 595 (1943); and PA0 V. Yamazaki, An Alkaline Water Retention Capacity Test for the Evaluation of Cookie Baking Potentialities of Soft Winter Wheat Flours, Cereal Chemistry, 30(3), 242 (1953).
Among the methods for increasing cookie spread suggested in these references are addition of flour or bran lipids to the dough (references I, J and M), addition of soybean or safflower lecithins to the dough (references J and K), increasing the baking time at lower baking temperatures (reference N), using coarse flour particles (references D and P), using a cold ovenband at the time of deposition of the dough pieces (reference P), decreasing the atmospheric pressure during baking (reference C), elimination of the hydrophilic starch tailings or water-soluble polysaccharides from flour (references F, H, L and Q), using a greasy ovenband (reference P), using a dough of high pH with an increase in the amount of ammonium bicarbonate (references E, N, O and P), using low temperatures in the front of the oven (references O and P), using a low viscosity flour (references A, D and G), covering up the flour hydration sites (reference B), using minimal mixing prior to dough standing (reference P), pretreatment of the flour with enzymes to lower its viscosity (reference A), pretreatment of the flour with sulfides and xanthates to lower its viscosity (reference A) and producing soft doughs using higher temperatures (references B, N and P). Many of these methods are difficult or costly to apply to high throughput industrial processes for the production of cookies, and it seems doubtful whether any of these methods, alone or in combination, would overcome the very great reduction in cookie spread experienced when sucrose is replaced with maltodextrins in cookie doughs.
There is thus a need for methods of reducing or eliminating the sucrose content of cookie doughs which does not give rise to the problems of lack of sweetness, brittleness of texture and lack of spread experienced in previous attempts to reduce or eliminate the sucrose content of cookies. This invention provides such a cookie dough and cookies produced therefrom.